Blonde, slim and strikingly pretty, the then 21-year-old Jill Haworth (who wore a dark wig for the part of Sally Bowles) seemed ideally cast as the English ingénue at large in decadent pre-war Berlin. The Kander-Ebb musical, based on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories and also starring Bert Convy as Sally's American boyfriend and Joel Grey as the seedy Master of Ceremonies, was a huge hit, winning numerous Tony awards and playing to packed houses for nearly two years.
As Sally Bowles, Jill Haworth gave a performance that seemed completely true to Isherwood's character with her "air of not caring a curse what people thought of her". She was not supposed to be a star – in the story Sally Bowles is a failure; the challenge for any actress is how to imply this, while still putting the songs across with panache. Explaining why he had chosen Jill Haworth over 200 other hopefuls, including Liza Minnelli and Julie Andrews, the show's director Harold Prince noted: "Sally Bowles wasn't supposed to be so slick that you forgot she was an English girl somewhat off the rails in the Weimar era. When Jill came in and auditioned, she nailed it right away, walked that line. That's what we wanted, and that's what she delivered." This was a view shared by Joel Grey, who described Jill Haworth as a girl with "a wild abandon about herself and her life... so Sally Bowles".
Sadly for Jill Haworth, the point was lost on some of the critics. A venomous review in the New York Times declared that Cabaret was a "stunning musical with one wild wrong note" – its leading actress. Jill Haworth, the reviewer continued, was "a damaging presence, worth no more to the show than her weight in mascara". In 1967, Cabaret received a total of 11 Tony nominations – including five for acting – but Jill Haworth was left out. And while Joel Grey was asked to re-create his part for Bob Fosse's screen version of the show in 1972, the part of Sally Bowles went to Liza Minnelli.
Valerie Jill Haworth was born in Sussex on August 15 1945. Her parents – her father owned a textile company and her mother was a trained ballet dancer – divorced when she was still a child.
Jill followed her mother to dancing school and performed at Sadler's Wells. She was just 14 when she was discovered by Otto Preminger and signed to appear in Exodus with Paul Newman and Eva Marie Saint. She played Karen, Sal Mineo's ill-fated Jewish girlfriend, and Preminger went on to cast her in two other epics, The Cardinal (1963) and In Harm's Way (1965). She also made several films in France before auditioning for Cabaret.
After Cabaret Jill Haworth appeared in a number of forgettable horror films and took small parts in television series such as Mission Impossible and Bonanza. She also did voice-overs for films and television.
During her heyday in the 1960s Jill Haworth was romantically linked for several years with Sal Mineo, her co-star in Exodus and, more briefly, with Paul McCartney. But she remained unmarried.
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